http://brokn2pieces.livejournal.com/438269.html

This also seems fairly critical

http://www.christodeklerk.com/2006/05/08/id-like-to-walk-to-church/

That documentary - while it does have it’s glaring flaws - I think does a nice job of showing how people are picked apart and isolated as a means of ostensibly “freeing” them, but really it isolates them, makes them insecure and creates a demand for products and services.

I was just reading the jacket of Amy Tan’s Saving Fish from Drowning. Apparently there is a Chinese folk-tale (or at least Amy Tan recounts one) about a man who resolves to “save 100 lives every day”, since it is sinful to kill and virtuous to save. So every day he pulls out 100 fish from the sea to save them from drowning. But he is always too late: on the dry river banks they are flopping around and squirming, and although they eventually calm down, every last one of them dies. Because it is sinful to waste, he brings the dead fishes to market and sells them so he can buy more nets and save hopefully more lives the next day.

So in that regard, I agree with you Alistair. And I truly appreciate your patience with my little online temper-tantrum. You seem to approach this debate with an open heart and spirit, so while I do not understand your position (or, rather, its projection onto conventional political dichotomies) I can appreciate that we both have the best intentions for the human spirit.

I will say that, when speaking of solutions, it is necessary to consider groups and group dynamics, and therefore politics. On an individual basis, yes, we are best when we approach each other in a loving manner. And this cannot be legislated. Nevertheless, humans seem not to do well with chaos either. I would love to subscribe completely to Ran Prieur’s vision of the world, but frankly some aspects of it terrify me. We do not live in a loving world (or, at least it seems difficult to see the world as loving) so I find it is in the interest of the 21st Century human to think about grass-roots political (and religious) solutions that keep to the spirit of love as best as possible.

While we’re on the topic of people being systematically destroyed for nefarious purposes, I HIGHLY recommend this BBC documentary, the Century of the Self which you can watch or download all of here:

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12642.htm

I’m personally not sold on the capitalism/socialism game of picking one to call evil. I think that’s a false dichotomy set up to trap people into not looking at bigger issues, just like Bush/Kerry, Coke/Pepsi and other false consumer choices.

More on all that later, but one of the thing in this movie that totally applies here, I think it’s in part 3 is how a team from Esalen went to a convent to do an experiment in social engineering. They “freed” a bunch of nuns from the constraints of tradition, and encouraged them to “be themselves.” The movie doesn’t explicitly make the connection, but it seems to have been the conceptual groundwork for engineering the feminist movement. That documentary - while it does have it’s glaring flaws - I think does a nice job of showing how people are picked apart and isolated as a means of ostensibly “freeing” them, but really it isolates them, makes them insecure and creates a demand for products and services.

That said, I don’t think it’s the fault of capitalism or even consumerism. I think it’s the fault of people with no conscience, no sense of basic humanity who will manipulate at any cost on all levels with no regard for individual consequences, because such things are meaningless to them. Those people could and do just as easily exist in a socialist or capitalist environment. The only thing that the “isms” tell you is which set of tricks and traps they are allowed to use overtly.

PS. Also keep your eye on the interactions between Esalen and the Black Panther movement in that same episode. Were the BP’s right? Was Esalen trying to manipulate them by “freeing” them from their strong collective identity? I’m going to do some individual posts on all this stuff shortly.

As a female, and a minority - here’s my 2 cents. I haven’t really thought this through, so, if there are holes in my thinking, point it out. I’m happy for any feedback.

As for all of the “isms” particularly feminism, gay/queer movements (even fundamentalisms, perhaps?) and so forth - I think they are byproducts of capitalism/imperialsim and its ties to extreme affluence (capitalism and imperialism…those two things are married to one another). I don’t know of any instance where capitalist activities hasn’t financially, poltically, or socially dominated at least one other group of people. If anyone knows of one, I’d be grateful if you pass it along.

My point is, capitalism (and to push it further in this day and age , globalization) is about hyperaffluence or hyperprivilege for some and extreme deprivations for others, usually for minorites (racial, sexual, etc.) Because of the extremely oppressive nature of capitalism, all kinds of identity politics spring forth, such as racial, sexual, and gender-based movements to name a few. So, to some degree, I think there is some truth in Alaistair’s comments. But it’s not just gay movements. It’s essentially all class and identity movements that have or are emerging. Also, from where are these movements intially emerging? Is it usually the countries that are incredibly destitute? They’re usually too busy fighting for basic human needs like food, health care, and H20. It’s usually the more affluent countries that become focused on the identity-based issues.

For me these movements are a necessary evil. Feminism, doesn’t resonate with me personally, b/c it’s often classist (the problem of affluence, again) and inadvertently racist. Plus, the way Western countries have the tendency to make virtually every cause in every part of the world into a feminist to promote their own cause just pisses me off.

But like all other identity-based movements, they are necessary yet flawed.

I think we should expect more movements - especially the religious kinds. It seems to be variety on the packaging of fundamentalism.

where do the attacks on the family come from?
feminism.
consumerism.
divorce industry (lawyers, judiciary.)
homosexual politics. (aids awareness, gay marriage…)
lawyers and judges.
media.
socialist politics.

Readers who are familiar with my comments on this blog will know that, as a gay man, I have serious questions about the link between homosexuality and empire culture. I’m not a huge fan of everything that has emerged from gay politics; yet the extreme alternative, where individuals are mindlessly destroyed for sexual transgressions, seems cruel, coercive, and far worse than the opposite problem of letting gays follow their own bliss (however disastrous it may in fact turn out). [As a side note, the grim irony of the linked-to story is that the adults who payed for this "gay" teenager's services bore none of the lethal consequences.]

I’m prepared to accept the position that empire culture creates the dilemmas that feminists find themselves and the conditions that lead to gay identity. For example, one might argue that the division of labor required in agrarian societies separates women from men and leaves them vulnerable to coercion; or that the natural state of sexuality is undifferentiated and that civilization (especially modern civilization) forces the psyche to “choose” heterosexuality or homosexuality. And I’m even prepared to accept the ugly truth that life does not promise happiness. But the fact is that the pre-feminist condition in late Western culture was far from paradisical: if you were lucky to be wed to a “good” man, all you had to worry about was his death; otherwise, your life was pretty much hell.

I get that there are large-scale forces manipulating us through the media and that the resulting consumerism is destructive to the soul. I don’t understand how you can blame socialism and not even mention the abuses of 21st Century capitalism? I’ll be charitable and assume that by “socialism” you mean “big government”, connected as it is to corporate capitalism. But you seem most critical of the few activities in which “big government” at least tries to give the appearance of making life easier for people.

In short: you seem to want to blame victims, while giving perps a huge pass.

Oh, and by the way, the quickest way to piss someone off, especially somebody who’s not 100% of European ancestry, is to start talking about “racial pride”. I won’t even go there.

It looked like I was being a hardass. Which I wasn’t.

You stayed directly across the street from an elementary school. How many more kids do you need to see? Believe me, there plenty of kids here. The areas of town one runs around in as an adult looking for a good time are not those areas.

Now, for certain there isn’t any rush to turn seattle into a baby factory on par with slc, but that there are not kids here or *that many* kids is only indicative of seattle’s industries and other demographics. Not least of which is the physical division between seattle proper and the suburbs. Very little blending with the family heavy suburbs is possible because one needs a car to cross the bridges or a reason to take a ferry. Families with tons of kids can be found at seattle center or woodland park zoo on any given weekend.

there used to be a structure in society called the family, where all sorts of roles were clearly defined and functional.
and tim, it not the liberals that are at issue here. it`s socialists. the wolf in sheep`s clothing.

Alistair, by “family” do you mean the idealized unit that reached its apogee in the fifties and is a peculiar artifact of industrialized culture? And who are these “socialists,” and why are you so piqued by them?

i am no fan of organised religion, but it`s the only institution holding the family together now.

Really?

I agree with you that there are forces that seek to “divide and conquer,” but I question your understanding of the nature of these forces. Part of this discussion is about keeping women in their place. In that context, I’d be interested to know what “feminism” means to you, and what aspects of it you perceive to be inimical to “the family.”

return to the ‘good ol days’ of female oppression and suppression.

Ken Wilber’s theory was that, because in agricultural societies women who work in fields with either animals or machinery miscarry at something like twice the rate they would on account of the dangers involved–you might get kicked by a mule and recover within a day or two but you’ll miscarry, essentially–women tend to be moved into less intensive positions like the home. At that point, in Wilber’s line of thought, it becomes far easier for men to opress women, as, ostensibly, the women simply aren’t contributing to the food situation.

Now, I tend to think that’s a fairly tidy theory, but it’s one the anarcho-eco-villagers don’t really seem to consider all that often, and I suspect that were we to return to a Ran Prieur-esque subsitence farming society, we’d see a lot more of that crap. On the other hand, in most agricultural societies that don’t use ploughs, women aren’t really oppressed to the extent they are in plough-based farming.

I don’t know how that really ties into the megachurch thing, although Xianity is a lot like Osiris worship, which is heavily agricultural. It is odd that relegating women solely to baby-making status is sort of an inversion of the history–it’s like saying that because things are the way they are now, that’s the way it should be and that’s the way it was. It’s called “naturalization” in Marxian thought…. So here’s to sodomy, the ultimate in anti-authortarianism?

in Seattle, there are nearly 45 per cent more dogs than children. In Salt Lake City [Utah], there are nearly 19 per cent more kids than dogs

So it wasn’t my imagination. When I was in Seattle I noticed there seemed to be very few kids around.

that contemporary Christianity was so closely inter-linked with the survival of the white race. We could easily correlate this to all the anti-immigration things we talked about recently, and about how some people seem to fear being breeded out by brown-skinned people.

Actually, there was some discussion in the Xian right about, in one preachers words, using kids as a “force multiplier” for Xianity. It’s a very strange turn that the Protestant churches in America have become increasingly intolerant of contraception. Fourty years ago, the Catholic opposition to the Pill and abortion was viewed largely as a means to fill the world with “brown babies”. I will note that the Mormons, much like the early Israelites and some ancient Xians, encouraged taking multiple wives–(why oh why is there no emdash code wordpress picks up?) more women=more babies=more Mormons.

I am fairly interested in how these megachurches recruit from young adults, who are often seeking a “family” to help then transition from childhood to full-fledged adulthood. We don’t have rites of passage and it opens up spaces like this for colonization. We might even explore it as a form of “marketing.”

demise of the white race…

Someone’s website is about to get some very interesting traffic.

Interesting that Seattle has such a low rate of church goers…..A guy named Phillip Longman said “in Seattle, there are nearly 45 per cent more dogs than children. In Salt Lake City [Utah], there are nearly 19 per cent more kids than dogs.”

“He also makes note of the fact that in the so-called red states that voted for George W. Bush, the fertility rate is 12 per cent higher than in the blue states that supported John Kerry. Another statistic: In the 1950s about 10 per cent of women were childless. That number is now 20 per cent.”